


Cold Enough for Comfort

by cazort



Category: Phantasy Star (Video Games), Phantasy Star IV
Genre: Cold Weather, Culture Shock, Fire, Gen, Racism, Religion, Weather
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1207039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cazort/pseuds/cazort
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young man from the desert world of Motavia named Dana, recently settled on the ice planet Dezolis of the Algol system, is torn between his ambiguous feelings towards the familiar culture of his own people, and the unfamiliar religious culture of the Dezolisians.  A casual experiment hurls him unexpectedly into the forefront of a social conflict that turns out to be inseparable from the religion and ecology of Dezolis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tough Questions

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the universe of the Phantasy Star series, some time after the events of Phantasy Star IV. I've taken considerable length to make this as consistent with canon as possible, but when necessary I may weaken consistency a bit in the interest of the story. The story also downplays the magical and technological elements of the universe, depicting life on Dezo as low-technology and driven mostly by social and ecological factors. My main motivation in writing this is to more deeply explore some of the social commentary that the game brought up, issues that seem directly relevant to our contemporary society.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dana, a Palman living on Dezolis, meets his Dezolisian friend Grug in a bar in Ryuon.

Dana had travelled by cross-country skiing a good hour to get to Ryuon, a small, fairly remote village on Dezolis, to meet up with his friend Grug in the local tavern, as he often did on one of his days off.  The morning air was bitter cold, and even with all his gear on, his hands and face were quite numb when he arrived.  First thing into the village, he went straight to the first watch fire, a large cauldron of flame that was the object of the Dezolisians' religious worship, but also served the practical purpose of being a convenient place to warm up.

The radiating heat was a simple pleasure and comfort to Dana, who stared into the flickering flames, holding out his bare hands to absorb the warmth.  His feet weren't warming up though, so he eventually scurried over to the tavern, where he found that Grug was waiting for him and had already grabbed the table closest to the fireplace, leaving the seat closest to the fire for Dana.

Grug was, like all Dezolisians, tall and lanky, and had tough-looking, hairless green skin.  His clothing consisted of many thick but loose-fitting layers that slightly concealed the slenderness of his build.  Next to Grug, or any Dezolisian for that matter, Dana looked stocky, but among Palmans his build was average, and on the small size.

With his blood still flowing from the physical activity, Dana felt that the indoor temperature was warm and cozy at the moment, but he knew from experience that it would soon feel a little cold and drafty, whereas Grug would put up with being a little uncomfortably warm. One of the reasons that Palmans and Dezolisians kept separate was their difference in temperature preferences.

"I saw you warming up your hands outside at the fire." Grug said, a greeting that seemed a little odd, in an "I was watching you." kind of way.

"Oh, why didn't you come over to say hi?" Dana asked.

"It looked like you might have been having a private moment."

Dana laughed.  He was interested in how and when Grug misread him, because it wasn't often.  Grug had been correct that Dana was zoning out, but hadn't been accurate in assessing that he wanted to keep to himself.

"What does it mean to you, that fire?" Dana asked.

"It's everything.  It's our life-blood, it protects us and heals us.  It unites us as one people."

Dana felt like he couldn't wrap his mind around the Dezolisian religion; on the one hand, they seemed to possess an almost obsessive reverence for their fires, but at the same time they seemed to also have a cavalier attitude towards them--it wasn't a big deal if one burned out, and the Desolisians were constantly lighting new ones and carrying torches and candles and lanterns here and there.

He wanted to keep these thoughts to himself, out of respect, but his face betrayed his skepticism.

"You don't believe everything that I'm saying, I can tell it." Grug said.

"Grug?  You piss me off so much sometimes, it's like I can't keep anything from you!" Dana said and they both smiled.

A waitress came up and startled Dana by placing her hand on his shoulder.  He jumped a bit and both Grug and the waitress laughed at him.  Why was he so edgy?  Maybe it was the topic of religion.  The two men each ordered beer and the waitress sauntered off.

"Your people used to be religious, didn't they?" asked Grug, throwing in: "And I don't mean that Zio nonsense, I mean way back when."

Dana shrugged. "I don't know."

He seemed deep in thought as his elbows rested on the table that was just a little too high for comfort. After a long time he finally admitted: "I mean, that was so long ago. I don't...I don't even know anything about what life was like back then."

And then the tougher admission, which was paired by a noticeable expression of unease on his face: "I don't know if anyone does."

There was a long pause: "I've never heard anyone talk about this stuff."

Dana never knew how well Dezolisians were able to read him. Their facial expressions were similar, but somehow different from Palmans. He always had a sneaking suspicion that they were better at reading his feelings than he was at reading theirs, but sometimes they'd grossly misread him. On the other hand, he felt totally blind with them most of the time; he could not easily tell when or whether they were lying, joking, or being direct.

But he had a good sense of whom to trust, and he trusted Grug. Grug was a good guy, and a deep thinker. And perhaps more importantly, he cared...he cared about everyone, and he showed it. One way he showed it was by allowing others to control the pace of the conversation.

Grug was sitting back and giving Dana space to think. He was also looking at Dana's heavy boots, which Dana had already slipped his feet back into, and his coat, lined with thick fur. It was a little too funny for him, just how much clothing Dana was wearing...and he started chuckling, as his feet were warm and he was even contemplating taking off his boots.

Dana could tell what Grug was laughing at and started laughing with him before either of them said anything.

Their beers arrived.

"I'm glad you can laugh with me, Dana." said Grug. "Most Palmans won't even greet me."

Dana smiled, but it quickly turned to an empty expression...Grug's remark was a compliment to him, but it reflected on the sad reality that his people had a deep mistrust of Dezolisians.

Dana was thinking. He sometimes felt more at home with Grug than with any of the Palmans in Tyler. But at other times he had trouble reading him, and he found that unsettling. And on some level he also felt like the colder temperatures preferred by Desolisians put a bit of an interpersonal barrier up--when spending time in Ryuon, he often felt perpetually cold, and on some level, the physical chill made it harder to feel interpersonal warmth.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to share any of this though.

"You seem like you might want to change the subject." Grug said.

Dana laughed nervously, then admitted "That wouldn't be such a bad thing."

"Why did you come to Dezolis anyway? You've never told me that."

Dana paused. Grug never seemed to ask him easy questions, but this was a bit easier.

"Well, shortly after travel opened up between the planets, I saw a notice posted that a family in Tyler was looking for some extra help, someone comfortable with the newer tools and technologies flowing in through Mota, but also good with children, and it looked like a nice arrangement.  And I wanted to get away, go somewhere new and different. I visited once, wasn't scared off by the cold, they hired me, and now I'm here."

Grug was listening.  A lot of people would have taken his answer and been like "Yeah" and then started talking about themselves, or making some statement about something else entirely, but Grug seemed to want more, so Dana went on.

"Back on Mota.  I don't know.  Everyone knew me for who I grew up as...and you know? I didn't really like myself. Or...rather, I didn't really feel like I was really being myself. I felt like I was always trying to be everyone else's expectations of me. My mother, my father, they both had the things they wanted me to be, or told me I was."

Grug was nodding.

"I wanted to start fresh.  Be my own person."

There was a long pause.

Dana asked: "Are you relating to what I'm saying?"

"I don't know." Grug said, still nodding. "I'm not sure I understand what the things you are describing are like.  If I want to do something I just do it.  If my parents don't like it, they can laugh at me, and criticize me, and they do. But it doesn't stop me from doing it."

"Oh man.  No no no it doesn't work like that back on Mota." said Dana.

"Maybe it's a very good thing that you came here then." Grug said.

Dana objected, smiling: "Yeah, but it's so freaking cold all the time!"

They both started laughing again.

Life was full of surprises. How would he have known a few years back that he'd be so happy here on this icy world, finding, and that the first real friendship he would form was with a Dezolisian?

Later that afternoon he donned his skis and travelled back to his home in Tyler, eager to get back before the sun set and temperature started to drop. Travel was relatively safe in this weather and he enjoyed the solitude of the road. His visor kept the glare of the hazy sun out of his face, and he admired the beauty of the mountains with their forested foothills and the vast, open snowy plains.  Far away, off to the right, he spotted three mammoths near the edge of the forest, massive creatures that looked so tiny from such a distance.

When he had been moving for some time, Dana began to feel warm...he unbuckled his coat a bit and let the wind cool him a little bit...it felt refreshing. There was something deeply empowering in his mastery over the cold. He had a thought...if he could be so physically comfortable on this frigid planet, he could accomplish anything. For a moment he felt that he was gliding on top of the world, almost flying as he sailed along on the skis.

But this feeling did not last. He began to get cold again, and stopped to fully buckle his coat again...his fingers fumbled trying to buckle it with his thick gloves on. He took off the outer layer and felt a stinging cold against his fingers as the air cut through his thinner inner gloves.

Perhaps he had thought too soon. He didn't want to get overconfident; even in good weather this was a dangerous place for him. He got the coat buckled up again and the glove back on, but now his right hand was stinging and his fingertips numb...an uncomfortable but perhaps helpful reminder of his own fragility as he continued on his way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've heavily rewritten this chapter to try to make it more accessible to people unfamiliar with Phantasy Star IV and the Phantasy Star universe. The main purpose of this chapter is to introduce Dana and his struggle with relating to the culture of the Dezolisians.


	2. Fiery Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dana has an unsettling dream involving fire, Desolisians, and the destruction of the village of Tyler.

That night at home in Tyler, Dana tossed and turned in bed for quite some time, unable to doze off.

At first he was pondering Grug's question about religion, but the more he thought, the more his thoughts seemed to become more troubled, a jumble of uncomfortable feelings, feelings of being ill at ease, vague thoughts not able to be visualized or put into words.

Eventually he was asleep and found himself in the middle of an unsettling dream.

He was standing in Tyler, on the edge of the chasm that the town was built next to. It was bitter cold, and he started walking back towards the center of town to warm up at the torch light. When he got there, there was a group of six Desolisians standing around the fire.

He felt an intense fear, thinking at first that the Dezolisians were hostile, and were blocking his access to the fire. But then one of them approached him holding a torch, held it out and said "Here, take this." The Dezolisian was dressed in long robes, and looked like a priest.

As Dana clasped the torch in his right hand, he felt a warmth flowing through his whole body, and a power. He felt alive and vibrant and strong, and full of energy.

He turned around and the chasm was right next to him, and he suddenly slipped and lost his footing. The torch slipped in his grip, the flame scalding his hand. He felt a searing pain and let the torch go, dropping it into the chasm and crying out. As it fell into the darkness, a giant fire burst out where it fell and rose and surrounded him. He saw the house where he had been staying, right on the edge of the chasm, bursting into flames, and a chunk of the wall fell off, and the earth was falling away into the chasm. He scrambled to get up onto higher ground, but failed and soon he was falling into a pit of fire.

He awoke with the sensation of falling, and his right hand still feeling the intense pain of a severe burn.

It was the middle of the night. He turned on the light, looked at the gold-bordered purple tapestry atop his dresser, the beautiful stone walls, the wooden rafters, the carving around the window. This house wasn't going anywhere...it seemed rock solid, almost timeless. Everything was calm and cool.

He heard soft footsteps shuffling in the hallway and a face appeared at his door. It was Else, the wife in the family where he was helping out.

"I heard you cry out...is everything alright?"

"Nothing. It was just a bad dream." Dana said, still holding his hand as if in pain, looking for a wound that wasn't there.

"Just let us know if you need anything."

Reynold and Else were so sweet to him, he thought. He felt comforted just knowing that they were sleeping in the other room.

He turned the light off again.

In the dark, Dana noticed that he actually felt exceptionally relaxed. He had awoken with a start but he actually felt very warm...it was like that feeling he had had when he was holding that torch.

In spite of the fact that the dream had been terrifying, he felt drawn to the image of that torch...he wanted to think about it. He imagined holding it, feeling his hand clasped around the handle, the warmth flowing through his whole body. It was a healing energy. As he imagined these things, the feelings were as real as they had felt in the dream. This time he eased very quickly into a peaceful sleep.

This time, when he awoke, he was well-rested and his mind clear, and he had forgotten about his hand.


	3. Hypothesis Testing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dana gets the idea of bringing the Dezolisians' holy flame back with him to Tyler, and begins scheming to carry out such a plan.

It was a muddy day, above freezing and the water was dripping off the roofs and forming large, murky pools which would surely refreeze overnight. Dana and Tinor were trudging vaguely in the same direction, for different reasons: Tinor was headed to the store, and Dana to return a saw he had borrowed from Julius.

Tinor stepped on snow that looked solid but sank into a deep puddle of mud that went over the top of his boots, and he cursed: "This planet is such a shithole. When we don't get the cold we have to deal with all this fucking mud. Damn this fucking shit!!!"

Dana could almost feel a rant about the Desolisians coming on, as from experience, complaints about the weather tended to precede them, but Tinor kept his mouth shut before anything else came out. He knew Dana didn't want to hear it, and he had plenty of other more sympathetic ears to voice it to later.

Tyler was a tiny village, and most people practiced a good degree of restraint in order to stay on good terms with each other.

Dana paused and looked around. It was pretty awful today. He hated the warm weather. He never would have imagined it, coming from the hot world of Motavia, but the warm days were the worst days. Everything got wet, and everything got dirty, seemingly no matter what you did.

"This is pretty awful. I never thought I'd say this but just want it to freeze again and stay frozen." Dana said, trying to show as much solidarity as he could with Tinor, as he waited for him to catch up.

Tinor made a grunt of solidarity as he pulled out of the mud. The two men walked on a ways silently and parted ways amiably.

Dana arrived at Julius' house. He heard the whirring and buzzing of machinery coming from the back of the house, so he walked around to the shed behind to find Julius hard at work. Julius put down his work and the noise stopped...he was machining a metal part to something.

"Thank you so much. This was immensely useful!" Dana said, adding: "Where do you want this?"

"Any time! Glad to be able to help. Just over there is fine." Julius said, pointing to an empty table.

Dana set down the circular saw that he had brought back, then spoke: "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?"

"The Dezolisians' special fires. They believe that any fire lit from their holy fire is itself a holy fire, and has healing properties. Do you think there's anything to it?"

Dana had consciously chosen Julius to ask on this matter, because he seemed more respectful of the Dezolisians than most villagers.

Julius spoke matter-of-factly: "You know, I don't want to sound disrespectful, but no. Like I know it's a big deal to them, and I won't say this when I'm around them, but I think it's all superstition. Fire is just fire...it doesn't matter where it's lit from, it's just a chemical reaction, you know?"

Dana nodded.

Julius went on: "Maybe it's because they believe. You know? Like placebo effect, if the doctor tells you that a pill will heal me, then it will." Mind over matter, you know, the mind-body connection. But it's all just science.

Dana pondered somewhat, and his eyes suddenly lit up as he had an intriguing thought.

"What is it? You have an idea, I can see it!" asked Julius.

"Oh it's just a crazy idea. Nothing really."

But Julius could see that the wheels were churning, and he had a sneaking suspicion that soon Dana would be back in his workshop asking to borrow another tool. And he was correct.

Back at home, Dana worked out a scheme to test Julius' hypothesis that the Dezolisians' religious beliefs were placebo effect.

He would bring back a lantern from Ryoun, lit with the fire from one of the Dezolisian watch fires. He was going to light one of the torch lights in Tyler with the Dezolisian's holy fire. If there were really something special about it, something different might happen.

It wouldn't be the most scientific test. He didn't know exactly what he was going to be looking for. He was just watching for something to happen, some way to tell that the fire lit from the Dezolisian watch fire was somehow different.

Transporting it, keeping the fire burning the whole time, proved to be a bit tricky. The first time he took a small lantern with him on the open plains as a test, a gust of wind blew it out pretty quickly. The Palmans did not think twice about re-lighting a lantern with a spark, so they had never had to invent truly robust wind guards.

Back to Julius he went.

"Ah, so you're going to tell me what this is for, now?" Julius pestered him. "I think I have an idea. No no...don't say anything. It has something to do with this fire thing, right?"

Dana told him his idea of taking back the Dezolisians' holy fire, and seeing if anything happened.  Julius was intrigued, and agreed to help him out of curosity.

By trial and error, they developed a wind guard to place around a lantern so that he could take it with him on the cold, windy plains.

"I bet you 50 mesetas that any way you try to test that fire, you won't be able to tell any difference."

"Done." said Dana, smiling.


	4. Space To Think

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dana ponders the Dezolisians' religion as he travels back to Ryuon.

Equipped with his new wind-shielded lantern, Dana set out to Ryuon on his next day off.  
  
On the road, there was plenty of time and space to think.  
  
Dana thought first about the events that he thought were about to unfold.  He began wondering about whether he needed to get permission for what he was going to do.  Whom could he ask for permission?  Were there any special ways that he needed to treat this flame, the holy object of the Dezolisians' religion?  The more he thought, the more he realized that he had been so focused on the mechanics of transporting the flame that he hadn't thought these issues through at all.  
  
These thoughts were compounded by how his experiences with the Dezolisians' religion were full of contradictions that he couldn't reconcile in his head.  How could the fires be so holy, if they had so many of them, and were so casual about lighting them and re-lighting them, taking them into their homes, and passing them around to everyone?  How could something so commonplace, so ubiquitous, be held so sacred?  
  
He felt unable to wrap his mind around the Dezolisians' religious beliefs, and as such, he was a bit scared of them.  They were a black box, something he did not understand, something that could produce unpredictable results, and thus that he was afraid of.  
  
At any rate, he'd ask Grug, who would either know about asking permission, or would know whom to ask.  And there would probably be at least one priest who would stop in the bar at some point, as there nearly always was.  That was another alien aspect of their culture and religion to him, why the Dezolisians' priests drink so much.  
  
Dana sped along a very straight, open stretch on the snowy plains, skiing ever-so-slightly downhill.  Another thought occurred to him.  He hadn't grown up around much religion, yet he had all these vague associations and ideas about what religion was, from his culture.  He had never met a Palman priest, if there even were any, yet he had this very strong impression that there was something weird about a priest drinking in a bar.  Where had that idea come from?  What did it say about what Palman religion had been like?  
  
He had no answers and kept thinking how little he knew.  How tiny he felt out here by himself, with few landmarks, the seemingly endless snow with only very slight slopes and hills, the giant mountains looming in the distance, yet seeming to move very little as he skied onward.  
  
Finally the path curved south, and he saw the smoke rising from Ryuon in the distance.  There was always more smoking rising from a Dezolisian village than a Palman one, owing both to the sheer number of fires, and the messiness of each one.  
  
Suddenly a miniature epiphany occurred to him.  This was a vast planet of ice.  Since leaving Tyler, and until now, not once had he seen any fire, other than the very distant fire of the sun, mostly hidden behind hazy clouds.  On this planet, sparsely populated even by the native Dezolisians, fire truly was rare.  He almost laughed at his stupidity...how could he have thought fire was so ubiquitious?  It was so painfully obvious, how and why fire was so sacred to the Dezolisians.  
  
Maybe understanding of the native religion here wasn't totally beyond his grasp.  But was there more to it than such an obvious connection?  
  
Soon he was at the entrace to town.  He approached the first watch fire, stopped and peered into it briefly, then passed it by to warm up in the tavern this time.


End file.
